Guerra: There's a part
of Proposition 3 no one has even mentionedBy Carlos Guerra
San Antonio Express-News

Web Posted : 11/04/2001 12:00 AM

As the nation debates federalizing airport security,
San Antonians are weighing civil service concerns in Proposition 3, which voters
will decide Tuesday.

Squabbles over civil service aren't new. They were probably
around in 200 B.C. when China instituted the first civil service, and they probably
erupted in the 17th century when Prussia's Frederick William brought the concept
to Europe.

In the United States, the need for civil service was
debated after the Civil War, but it wasn't until 1871 that Congress established
the first Civil Service Commission.

It was short-lived and didn't do much because politicians
did everything possible to scuttle it.

In fact, civil service didn't really take root in America
until the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 after a disappointed office-seeker
assassinated President Garfield.

Since then, arguments about civil service have erupted
regularly, and unfortunately, too many have focused on the difficulty of firing
government workers.

Civil service rules do require that the basis for firing
and documentation be in place before a classified worker is dismissed.

Unfortunately, we tend to ignore or forget another, more
important aspect of civil service protections.

The original intent for establishing a federal civil
service system  that eventually extended to all the other governmental
entities  was to replace corrupt cronyism with a qualifications-based
process for hiring government employees.

This is something we shouldn't ignore when we weigh the
merits of Proposition 3.

Let's remember that this proposition started out as one
that would remove civil service protections for the city's licensed professions
because the legal canon of ethics guarantees a client's right to fire counsel
at will.

But before the measure was put on the ballot, city staff
persuaded the City Council to add the city's seasonal, part-time and temporary
workers to the list of workers exempted from these protections.

Staff members made the argument that these workers 
almost a third of the city's employees  should be officially declassified
so the city could "clean up" its charter and city regulations to reflect
what they insisted already exists.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Section 69 of
the City Charter orders that "a classified civil service" shall exist
for "all appointive offices and employments" of the city and its agencies
except those on a list that follows.

Those "specifically engaged for professional, investigative,
consultative and other special services" are on that list, but temps aren't
 and shouldn't be.

Staff members also asserted that the city's Civil Service
Code already exempts these workers, and that isn't the whole truth.

Rule XII, Sec. 5. (a.)(3.) of the code clearly specifies
that "no person(s) shall be eligible as a temporary employee in any one
or more positions for more than an aggregate period of three months in any fiscal
year."

Will we be so cold-hearted that we'll forget that an
untold number of "temporary" workers have been wrongfully classified
long beyond their three-month period so they could be denied such benefits as
health insurance, paid vacation and sick leave?

Ask yourself two questions:

Is it right to institutionalize abuse by making it law?
And in doing so, won't we also give City Hall's big shots the power to declare
any city job a temporary position  perhaps in perpetuity  that they
can give to some crony?